Grinding Legal Gears

February 2013 was a month that fans of the Aliens franchise wished they could forget. After years of development hell, and after being handled by two companies well respected in the gaming world Sega and Gearbox, players finally got their hands on Aliens: Colonial Marines. A game that years ago sounded too good to be true, and the product delivered was nowhere near what was promised. In April 2013, a class action lawsuit was filed against Sega and Gearbox with the claim that the game was falsely advertised pointing the finger towards demos that were shown at gaming conventions before release that were drastically different (and better) than the final product.

After falling off the radar, seemingly getting ahead of it, Gearbox announced earlier this week that it wishes to be removed from the class action lawsuit stating that the company spent several million dollars of it's own to try to see the product through to fruition, and what Sega delivered does not reflect the investment. Steve Gibson, Marketing Vice President of Gearbox was adamant;

"During the development process, Gearbox supplemented Sega's development budget with its own money to help Sega finish its game; Gearbox's contributions to A:CM totaled millions, none of which was ever repaid,"

Whether or not Gearbox will be removed from the lawsuit remains to be seen, but the company is trying to get ahead of this while they still can. Regardless of that particular outcome, this shows that the class action suit is still alive and well and that they do fear backlash in their funds much more than they did this time a year ago.
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